Pakistan launched strikes near the Afghan border early on Sunday morning, claiming that the targets were hiding places of Pakistani terrorists it holds responsible for a recent surge in attacks within its borders.
Who was the target as per Pakistan?
Pakistan has withheld operational specifics and the precise sites of the strikes. However, the military carried out “intelligence-based selective operations” against seven camps linked with Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and its affiliates, as per Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on X. He also added that an affiliate of the Islamic State Group was targeted in the border area.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the strikes might have occurred within Afghanistan, although Kabul did not immediately respond. As per local accounts, at least 17 Afghan civilians were killed in the operations, which targeted locations within Afghanistan, including the Ghani Khelo and Garda Samia districts, as reported by Times of India.
What led to the escalation?
The attacks followed a large number of fatalities in the northwest of Pakistan, close to the Afghan border. A few days prior, a suicide bomber crashed a car loaded with explosives into the wall of a security station in the district of Bajaur (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province). It caused a portion of the compound to collapse. Authorities later stated that the attacker was an Afghan national, after killing eleven troops and a child, as reported by AP.
Two troops, including a lieutenant colonel, were killed by a second suicide bomber who attacked a security convoy in Bannu district just hours before the border strikes.
Following the bloodshed on Saturday, Pakistan’s military issued a warning that it would not “exercise any restraint” and that the operations against the perpetrators would continue “irrespective of their location”, as reported by AP.
What accusation does Pakistan have against the Taliban leaders of Afghanistan?
Pakistan has “conclusive evidence,” as per Tarar, that the latest attacks, which included a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad earlier this month that killed 31 worshippers, were carried out at the “behest of their Afghanistan-based leadership and handlers,” as quoted by AP.
He further claimed that despite Pakistan’s repeated calls for Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership to take concrete measures to prevent militant organizations from doing operations in Pakistan using Afghan territory, no real development has taken place. As per AP, Tarar added that Pakistan wants the international community to put pressure on Afghanistan’s leader to honour the Doha agreement. It pledges that Afghan territory would not be used against other nations.